ChromeStar posted at 7:46AM Mon, 14 December 2020 - #4407459

Try using an area light instead of whatever light you are using now, without shadow blur. How much render time does that "cost"? Because it will get you the same blurred shadow, just a little more trouble to set up.

Interesting. That worked, and actually looks better to my eye. Just changed the light in the test scene from infinite to area.

It took 2.13 seconds to render via CPU, 4.64 GPU. Weird, because usually it's much longer for GPU.